A week after Marybeth came over to work on the project – after she had (thankfully) given us both a 90 percent on it (we were deducted 5 percent for lack of creativity, but that was a fault on my part), my hero of a dad decided to spend a peaceful Sunday morning with me by taking me fishing. You see, my dad was never a traditional man. He wasn't like other parents; all the other parents of the world tended to wait patiently by their baby's side just to hear them say their first word and clap insanely when the baby took their first steps, but my dad never cared for that. My mom did, though, but that's beside the point. My dad was a different type of parent. He threw me a freaking party when I walked to Main Street using my white cane without anyone's hand guiding me, and bought me my video game console when I wrote my first paragraph using my braille machine. My dad was not a traditional man, so naturally, that meant that he had never ever actually gone fishing in his entire life.

"It'll be fun. We could be real men," dad said as he stuffed his face with pizza, "Men. Muscles. Grr."

I scoffed. "You know what's manly? Going out for sushi and ordering two bento boxes instead of one."

"There are different types of manly, bud, and fishing is possibly the best kind. You agreed to it the other day."

"That was when I knew it was in a week. You don't even like fishing. I don't want to go tomorrow, please? What if I fall into the water?"

"The boat will be lighter!"

At that point my mom had put her foot down and made it clear that I was indeed, going fishing at 5 a.m. on Sunday, and then changed the subject into why my dad had been wearing pajamas the whole day. They then talked about our beloved Barry-the-spitting-tutor and how he had chased his dream all the way to Australia, to which I added that he actually got over his fear of airplanes on the flight there (at least, that's what was said when he called to give me an update). When my mom heard that she burst into laughter and was so full of joy that I was almost sure that she cried. That gave my dad a chance to eat the last slice of pizza from her plate.

After dinner I helped my mom wash/dry the dishes – without dropping any – and then locked myself in my room in order to force myself to focus on my book report that was due on Monday. It was probably midnight by the time I actually started, and that's when I heard the phone ring. I groaned, hurriedly finished my introduction, and ran to answer it.

"Hello?" I said, trying to hide my grumpiness.

"Dude, why are you always so cranky when you pick up the phone?"

"Why are you always calling me at unearthly hours?"

"It's only," he paused, "12:36."

"It's been a long day, Egan."

"No Orenda?"

"No Marybeth?"

"Shut up."

"Why don't you tell me why you're calling before my inner old lady gets flung out and I hang up on you?"

He sighed. "Okay. So, get this. I'm at school and I'm sitting at the back of the class during Bio. Olly Peters taps me on my shoulder and compliments my new hoodie, and I tell him thank you, like any normal person would. And then he hands me a note, and by that time I'm freaking the crap out because, well, is he flirting with me? Hopefully he wasn't. He wasn't. On the note is some weird address and then he tells me, "see you, next Friday, come any time after six. Invite anyone." So, I tell him, holy crap, of course! That's because Olly is the richest kid in the grade and his house is a hell of a lot bigger than what we see in our neighbourhood. Wanna come?"

"Basically, a highschool party?"

"Yep."

"Me? Blind dude? Blind, uncool, BLIND dude? Blind. With you?" I really wanted to get the message across.

"Yep."

"I'm too tired for this. Like, seriously? Me?"

"Don't be like that, man. Bring your girlfriend, it'll be fun. I'm trying to be nice, and I promise it'll be a relaxing party."

I thought for a moment. "No crack cocaine club?"

"No crack cocaine club," Egan assured me.

I exhaled dramatically. "Fine."

"Nice."

"Well, night. My head's pounding and my dad's taking me fishing at 5 in the morning tomorrow."

"My condolences. Bring your girlfriend."

He hung up in a hurry and I smiled to myself, even though I didn't want to. Finnegan Annson, loser of the century, was going to a highschool party. Without crack cocaine, of course.

I didn't go to sleep immediately after I got off of the phone with Egan, because a) I was pretty excited and b) I had to at least finish a half of my book report in order to c) pass tenth grade. The book that the report was supposed to be about was called 'The Little Bird', and was about, well, a little bird. It was also about a little girl though, and she was the one who raised the little bird, until the little bird wasn't so much of a little bird but a full grown eagle.

I crawled into bed after finished my first paragraph thinking that the little bird didn't know that it wasn't really a little bird. The little bird was a strong eagle that could soar for miles but it never flew because the little girl wanted a little bird, so the eagle remained a little bird for the girl – even though it wasn't anymore. I tried my best to fall asleep with the sound of the night and a churning feeling in my stomach that kept telling me I was an eagle, not a little bird. That idea made me feel pretty unstoppable. But I ignored it. And thought about the party Egan had invited me to. I had always dreamed of living a cliché yet simple kind of life and it seemed like every single teenager goes to a highschool party at one point in their lives. 

Soon, the thought about the not-so-little bird crept into my brain again, and that just made me frustrated – which made me have an even harder time falling asleep. Instead of just lying on my bed I crept out to the kitchen and grabbed a few chocolate chip cookies because my stomach was begging for some. I sat on my bed and chewed the cookies whilst refraining from leaving crumbs on my sheets, then finally lay down again, and attempted to count sheep.

-----/////-----

Suddenly, an incredibly loud tapping noise snapped me out of my sheep counting.  Strangely I didn't think of it as Orenda because in my subconscious I knew that it was in the middle of the night, and anyway, she was on a trip with Mrs. Castellano. So instead of answering to the tapping I sprang up in my bed and stayed as still as humanly possible until it died down, and breathed again.

"Finn? Open the window!" A muffled voice sounded.

"Orenda?" I whispered to myself, tossed the blankets off, and went to open the window. The moment I unlatched it and took the screen off, Orenda came crawling through. She slammed the window shut for me (too loudly, which resulted in my heart skipping a beat in the bad way), and then threw herself onto my bed, making the springs creak. I just stood there, and she just chuckled.

"I missed you," she said, and then coughed very loudly. I shushed her, but she coughed nonetheless, because it's something that's hard to control, I guess.

"Me too, but why are here right now? What time is it?"

My bed creaked again and I could tell that she was checking the time on my digital clock. "Um, two in the morning," Orenda announced.

"God, Orenda. And you walked here? It's not safe."

"Well, I'm not kidnapped, am I? Aren't you glad to see me?"

"Very," I walked over to my bed and hopped on beside her. She rocked side to side happily.

"I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"

"Um, no, actually. I've been having a very sleepless week. Or, life, really. I think it's just because I'm stressed about finals, and I know it's, well, being a blind student is about a million times harder than being a sighted one, and here's why, it's because I-"

"Want to go to Willow?" Orenda piped up, cutting me off.

I sighed, grateful that she changed the subject away from school. "If my parents find me gone, my dad will literally contact the FBI."

"I need your help with something. It's really exciting! And I need you to come to Willow to help me with it."

I contemplated the idea for a few seconds even though I already knew the answer. Orenda let me go through the window before her, because she was convinced that I would dive head first and insisted to make sure I wasn't going to fall flat on my face. Unfortunately I did fall (on my shoulder) and I held back my cry of pain as Orenda threw me my shoes and white cane - mostly so that I wouldn't wake my parents up. After the pain in my shoulder subsided, Orenda somersaulted elegantly out of my window and grabbed my hand with her freezing cold one. I tried to follow her without falling - like every single time we walk somewhere together - but I tripped over my own feet a million times. That made her laugh, but I told her to be quiet because our neighbours were probably sleeping.

The night was surprisingly cold, for early summer, anyway. I felt my nose getting mildly frozen and I started sniffling. Orenda handed me some tissues to shut me up as we reached Willow; I blew my nose with it and then stuffed the tissue in my pants pocket.

We walked through Willow's leaves and Orenda set up camp right next to Willow's trunk. I leaned against it and blew my nose again as she scrambled around with her art supplies.

"God, Finn. It's not even that cold. Your nose is all red and so are your cheeks – you look like you just came from Antarctica. Man up."

I slid down the side of Willow and sat down, my legs straight out. "Don't you mean woman up? You see, the world seems to think that only men can be macho."

"Crap. What has society done to me? I totally mean woman up. Learn a thing or two about toughness from us ladies."

"Hippie," I said under my breath.

"Hey! I'm all for the revolution. Wait until it is 2010 and the idea of sexualizing women in the media is completely banned."

"Okay, eleven years. The countdown begins."

"I wonder if you'll have a beard in eleven years. Your dad has a beard. And don't hippie me," she said jokingly, which made me say it again. Orenda laughed.

"I entered an art contest," she said out of the blue, with an overwhelming amount of bubbliness. "I already started on some paintings. That's the surprise, by the way." She zipped open a bag and I flinched as she dumped all the contents out of it in front of me.

"How many entries do you get, exactly? That's a lot of paintings," I asked as I gingerly reached my hand out towards where I thought the paintings were. My hand landed on one and I ran my fingers over the rough bumps and creases of the paint.

She ignored my question and kept talking. "It's my memory tree. Here," she handed a piece of paper to me, "one of my first memories. It's my mom and I picking strawberries with my best friend at the time. I was four. And this one," another paper was given to me, "me learning to ride my bike down Main Street and knocking over all the flower pots when I was six. And I have a whole bunch now um, I've got one of my dad and I planting vegetables, and one of me and Cammy playing dress up. I'm not done that one yet, though. Cammy's face still needs a lot of work."

Orenda kept telling me about the other paintings she had finished for her memory tree, and the way her brightness radiated off her and onto me made me feel kind of like I had lived her life. With every little piece of paper she threw onto my lap I fell deeper and deeper into her brain and it only got more and more beautiful, never uglier. It was like walking towards the oven from across the room and having the sweet smell of cookies getting stronger and better. Or perhaps that was just because I was still hungry.

I smiled and sat closer to her, the papers sliding off my body. Orenda stopped babbling and asked me why I was doing what I was doing and I told her that it was because she was practically belting out her life story to the entire neighbourhood. I figured if I sat closer to her maybe she would whisper. She just reminded me that Willow was in the middle of nowhere in a neighbourhood that was in the middle of nowhere, so I let her talk but still stayed close to her.

"I'm going to pin them up on Willow. You know, my memories on my memory tree. I've got the city's permit. If they cut her down my blue ribbon paintings are going with her." She finally said.

"That's amazing! That's great!"

"I know! And also, I want you to paint some."

"Me?" I cleared my throat to cover up how taken aback I sounded. "For your art contest?"

"Yes."

"But it's your contest. Is it just because I'm that good of an artist?"

"Yeah." She sounded really serious. "You're also that good of a fri – uh, b – um, person. You're important to me. You're one of my more important memories, and I figured it would be symbolic if my best memory painted his best memory."

"Okay," I said softly.

"Yeah?"

"Give me a paintbrush, I'll start now."

So, she did. She also got a paintbrush for herself and squeezed whatever kinds of colours onto a plate. I lay down on my stomach, propped myself up on my elbows, and Orenda sat next to me. She rested her paintbrushes on my back but I shook from side to side to get them to roll off, which made her giggle.

I thought for a while about what I would paint. Orenda was deathly quiet, and the only thing I could hear was the wind and a few cars rolling by outside of our safe cocoon. I thought about invited Orenda to that Olly Peters' party but the silence was so nice that I didn't want to ruin it with my voice. So, I rested my head on my arms and breathed in the grass. The smell of the cool earth made me feel like painting something like a bowl of salad or an uprooted flower. I dunked my paintbrush onto the plate and then swiped it back and forth on my paper as if I was actually uprooting a flower. Orenda complimented me on my genuine angst, and I accepted it proudly.

It had been several minutes after that when Orenda finally said something. I was on my second painting, this one about cold rocks.

"I - I came back four days ago."

"What?"

"I came back." Her voice cracked and I felt like she was going to start crying. I'm not going to lie, I panicked a fair bit.

"Oh, okay. I'm glad to see you; well I can't actually see you because-"

"I'm sorry," she was breathing unevenly and I sat up to be at her height.

"Why?"

"I'm sorry. I feel like I'm being unnecessarily emotional."

"No, you're not."

"I am."

"Um, you can tell me if anything's wrong, you know. I have no other friends to tell them to."

She chuckled softly but not for long. I was sure that she was crying now. In fact, with every second her crying got a little bit more intense and I was immediately flung back into that time in winter when she came through the window and grabbed onto my shoulders crying about something I never got an answer for. But this time she wasn't crying as if her world was ending; it was more like she was crying because she made someone's world end. She was just sitting there in front of me, sniffling and exhaling shakily.

"Why are you crying?" She started crying even more and I immediately regretted my question. Everytime I asked that she just seemed to cry louder and harder. She threw herself onto me and I just stayed still, letting her hug me. Slowly, Orenda regained her normal breath sounds and let go of me, carefully, like I was a bomb that would explode at any moment.

"I'm terrible in the sense that I push people away." She blurted out. "I push everyone away. I tell you a kiss is just a kiss, and I mess up your relationship with your friend, and after that I try to prove that I'm perfectly fine. But I'm not because I'm too scared to like you and finally I go on a date with you and then I don't call you when I'm back home and I even ignore your calls and-"

"Orenda, I forgive you." I talked slowly and quietly, hoping that it would make her breaths slower and quieter too. "You don't have to be afraid of me. I won't shatter into a million pieces if you need time to yourself, okay? Um, I don't want bubbly and happy Orenda if you're just acting. I'm not mad. I'm also not hurt, you know? It's not a big deal. And you'll never be able to push me away, unless you move to Greenland or something."

She sniffled. "Okay."

"Alright."

There was only breathing for a while.

"You should go home. I'll walk you there." Orenda said.

I agreed and I waited for her to pack everything away. She zipped up the bag and we started back, with Orenda holding my hand to make sure I wouldn't trail away or something like that; although it felt like she was trying to keep herself safe as well. I had never been in a position where I had to be the bigger person or step up to comfort another person, which is strange because everyone experiences something like that often. Instead I was always the one in need of cheering up and helping, but this time when I let go of Orenda's hand slightly it just made her grab on tighter. I tried to not worry about her too much, so I started talking.

"Tell me about red."

"Huh?"

"Red. The colour? You said my nose and cheeks were red."

"Oh. I don't know." She swung our arms absentmindedly. "It's just... red. The first thing people think of when someone mentions red is usually blood. Or, uh, fire. Firetrucks. Fire hydrants. I don't know. Roses?"

"So, danger?"

"No. Okay, there're different types of red. For example, the red on your nose is more of a ruby red. It's caused by your blood rushing to one place to provide something; I'm not brainy enough to get into the science of it. But there are other types of red."

We got to my house and Orenda boosted me through the window, and then jumped in as well. I kicked off my sneakers and walked over to my bed; Orenda's feet pattered on the floor as she followed me.

"Alright, so fire red. I guess you could say that it's all anger but if I'm totally honest all I really think of is warmth. The warmth of a blanket on a cold night or a person's hand or taking out freshly baked pastries from the oven. Well, no, actually. This is a hard colour to pinpoint. I don't know if I can explain it."

"I get it. It's the warmth of being in a safe place. And it doesn't really have to be a place, right? A time? A moment, a memory?" I lay down on the bed and placed my glasses on my bedside table, making sure to keep my eyes closed.

"It's being. It's the warmth of a fireplace and it's the rush of blood to your cheeks when something tugs at your heartstrings and makes you feel present. It's running through the streets and screaming at the top of your lungs when you feel like that's the only option other than keeping your feelings bottled up inside of you. Have you ever done something so daring that it amazed you? That's bright red, Finn. It's jumping off cliffs and kissing in the dark and talking to people that you actually don't like but you try to be nice anyway because they could probably snap you in half. Oh!" I could feel Orenda get back to her old self again with every word. "Ambition. Like, late night adventures and making stupid mistakes and forgetting that time is passing at all because the night stays dark for hours and hours – the moon stays there because time is frozen still. And the next night, you do it again and you are still being; it stays like that. In the end it's the same moon."

"It's youth?" I shifted into a more comfortable position and hugged my pillow.

"Yes, youth. It's the feeling of, being, um, what's the word... unstoppable. A soaring bird. I think when everyone's old and wrinkly, and years have passed - way more than eleven years - and you're telling stories to your grandkids about your unstoppable adventures, they talk about the red dress." She sighed contently. "It's always the red dress. It's always about that striking, radiant red dress that's worn when dancing and twirling under the stars and feeling so freaking forever that nothing can ruin the moment. It is cold red noses and cheeks and the hope that forever will not end for a little while longer."

I tried to say something but my body had collapsed from all the tiredness I was feeling. Orenda kept explaining about red and I listened to her until I couldn't stay awake anymore. Her voice got quieter and quieter as I imagined being and living in a world dappled with red ambition and being alive. It was the blood running through our veins, anyway.

"I love you." That was the last thing I heard her say. I heard her say so quietly that it was mostly the sound of her breath. I almost said it back but my thoughts were drowsy and unclear so I couldn't bring myself to actually open my mouth to formulate words; but I knew that she said it. She then draped my blanket over me and brushed my hair off of my face. And then Orenda left, clicking the window closed gently, then probably ran home feeling like forever, feeling unstoppable, and hopefully feeling like she was wearing the radiant red dress. But I wouldn't know.

A/N!

How was this chapter? Comment your thoughts :) IT'S STARTING TO GET GOOD IN THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS!!

Also how are you? I'm guessing summer is almost over/already over for most of you (where did the time go?!? what the heck)

(warning, shameless self promo): I made an art Instagram account called jen.wonder ! Feel free to follow me :) I will probably follow you back unless you're very creepy haha

Questionnnnn

If you guys write, how do you come up with character names and plots? Do you have a specific method or is it all spontaneous?

The plot usually comes to me over the course of a few days but the character names always come first! They come really randomly though. For example, I came up with Finnegan after watching JacksGap for the first time (i know i know) and I always pass by a street called "Anson", and as I passed that street one day I just put the names together and from that moment on Yellow was born! wow

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH AND I HOPE YOUR SCHOOL YEAR IS THE BEST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE, DAPPLED WITH RED AMBITION AND HAPPINESS.

-JEN <3

also, thank you for 14K! I hope this story grows and grows :)